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Giving our children a start in life

Most people facing parenthood do so with some trepidation, others with great joy.  All of us hope to be able to give our children a good start in life.

But that means such vastly different things to people.

For some, it means giving them a job in the family business, setting up trust accounts, giving them the money to buy their first property, paying for the best education possible, buying them a car, using your network to help get them started.

For others, it means an endless struggle trying to provide food and shelter, taking whatever part-time job you can whenever you can, and being able to do nothing about the erosion of your workplace entitlements or exploitation by your employer.  Or trying to get by on Newstart or Youth Allowance if you can’t live with your parents.

For many around the world, it means fleeing war, oppression, intolerance, famine and abject poverty.

But there will be one great leveller – global heating.

Sure, some will be able to afford their air-conditioned mansions and the ever-increasing price of food – but how will their businesses go as supply chains and distribution and communications networks are devastated by what should no longer be described as natural disasters?  What happens when their customers can no longer afford to spend money?  Or when their seaside homes are washed away by storm surge?

Those that advocate short term greed are not giving their children a good start in life.  They are threatening them with an apocalypse that will be ever-increasingly expensive and difficult to avoid.

Now is not the time for deregulation.  It is not the time for more fossil fuel subsidies and environmental approvals waived through.  It is not the time for pointing at the other guy.

If we care about our children, every one of us must contribute to a global effort to reduce emissions in whatever way we can.  We must collaborate in a collective endeavour.

Deniers say the climate has changed in the past.  Well so has the economy.  To think we can continue to use up finite resources and use the world, its waterways and atmosphere, as rubbish dumps, is beyond selfish – it is madness.

Our government’s excuses can no longer be accepted.

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20 comments

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  1. Kate Ahearne

    Thanks Kaye. As Greta said at Davos, ….we’re asking you to act as if you love your children more than anything else.’ Yes, the climate has changed in the past, but now it’s changing because of human behaviour. Do we really believe that we can pollute the planet year after year and expect the planet to just ‘suck it up’? (BTW, not sure that the word, ‘proscribe’ is appropriate in this context.)

  2. Kaye Lee

    Thanks Kate, i agree with the BTW. I have changed it.

  3. Keith

    Deniers say the climate has always changed, that is true; but, scientists are saying it is changing ten times faster than past epochs. It’s a hard point to take on I believe so have provided 3 references.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130801142420.htm

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/todays-climate-change-proves-much-faster-than-changes-in-past-65-million-years/

    https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

    So when scientists are stating that we are in a danger zone we had better believe it, we have been told we are 100 seconds off complete disaster on the Doomsday clock.

    A number of recent studies underpin the the setting of time on the Doomsday clock.

    2019 in climate science: A continued warming trend and ‘bleak’ research

    Sadly, we have governments doing little in relation to climate change, with such policies there will be a cross over point where economies can no longer operate due the costs created by a business as usual paradigm. The atmosphere will be further charged with energy creating worse extreme events. Australia is one of the worst offenders in ignoring what scientists have been saying. The use of words such as “resilience” and “adaptation” are used to fool people rather than provide anything meaningful.

  4. Pete

    Kate and Kaye, it would be good if we had a government prepared to do a macro-audit of our Western lifestyles. Firstly, look at discretionary waste and its symptom, overt pollution. Then decide what are needs for a functioning economy and what is fluff. It’ll probably take some State intervention to mandate lower energy-use patterns of living.

    Won’t happen under LNP or Labor, it’s in the too-hard basket.

    There are a few more environmental issues that need a scientific blowtorch applied:
    1. Chemtrails: Who’s spraying aerosols in our once cobalt blue, now washed out pale blue skies, and under what authority?
    2. Vaccinations: Some vaccinations are proven, most are not. Where are the independent studies on this topic, certainly not with Australia’s goto expert, the deeply conflicted US Centre for Disease Control.
    3.Mandatory electromagnetic irradiation (Wireless & WiFi) of all children from day one (unless they live in a Faraday cage or in a internet coverage black spot) needs to end.

    At radiation levels trillions of times that of natural background radiation, what hope does anybody have of adjusting? Does it surprise anyone that dementia is now on the verge of becoming the most common condition present at death? If you can receive a mobile phone call as you read this comment you are being irradiated to a depth of about 20mm, full body. 30 years of that, 24/7 and one is well on the way to a blood leukemia demise. One of my main concerns is the fact that most children* are forced to sit in the most toxic environments on the planet every time they take a class at school where WiFi is used. Given the human body’s immune system isn’t developed until about 201-25 years, children are being set up to fail.

    So that Big Pharma reaps rewards perhaps?

    Giving children a good start in life depends in part on removing a few obstacles – industry funded scientists, mainstream media and their puppet govts. But how to do that?

    most children* – there are a few schools in Australia that have hard-wired classrooms.

    I would like to see 100% of classrooms WiFi free, and the sooner the better.
    Imagine if every parent in Australia had that as their NY resolution.

  5. pierre wilkinson

    why is it that people fail to accept that every little bit helps
    and what is so wrong about trying to clean up the planet?
    thank you Kaye Lee and the AIMN for showing me I am not alone in my viewpoints

  6. JudithW

    With their willful disregard of the available scientific research, this government has condemned, and continues to condemn our endangered ecosystems to further stress and to an accelerating trajectory into an uncertain future for what remains of our environment, future Australian citizens, and the rest of the planet.
    Surely Scott Morrison ranks as Australia’s public enemy number 1.

  7. Geoff Andrews

    Two of my eight great grandparents were early squatters on a cattle property in north Queensland. I have often wondered what their attitude was towards the aborigines – did they poison waterholes; kill a few for Sunday sport? I think I would be a little diminished if I suddenly discovered that they been bastards.

    Does any reader know of a web site that allows one to record for ones descendants in, say, 2100 that their old great great grandpappy was not a denier but was powerless to prevent the intolerable conditions that I suspect they may be experiencing in 2100?

    There is probably a greater need for a similar web site to preserve for the descendants of Morrison et al (who have the power to change) that their ancestors did not have the intelligence and/or concern for them to stop flogging their ideological hobby horse.

  8. wam

    Wow kaye ‘some’ buying houses and cars but now you are talking the important factor is our involvement in climate change not just . Everyone should know the climate(s) is a collection of weather over time. conthe change itself.
    The critical factor is the billion europeans who bot rich on the use of the finite fossil fuels and the more than 6 billion yet to get their share of ‘rich’.
    How can this be achieved?
    Not by fossil fuel so renewable energy sources are urgent.
    We have the CSIRO once a leader in research get them ramped up and there are $billion to be made.

    ps
    Geoff Andrews
    I wonder if you have a problem with our original inhabitants when you cannot afford them a proper noun?

  9. Harry

    Surely making education free , from pre-school to uni, is part of the answer. And I refuse to accept that the federal budget cannot afford it!

  10. corvusboreus

    There you are Kaye Lee, wam has once again given you a magic mantra guaranteed to cut through to the masses.
    Kind of our resident aficionado of re-re-regurgitated glossolalia to offer you advice on communicative messaging.
    Forget coherent narrative backed with evidential citations, just wear them down with repetitions of quasi-cryptic slogans.
    Learn to bray rabbuttian, yes??

  11. David Evans

    “We are Rolling Downhill Like A Snowball Heading For Hell”.

  12. Roswell

    wam, so Geoff omitted to use a capital A.

    I’ve seen worse.

  13. Matters Not

    Pete, pretty sure you won’t get far on this site with the chemtrails nonsense. Being an anti-vaxxer won’t help your cause either. Then there’s the Wifi speculation. Seems like your batting zero minus, at least in these parts. Time for some serious Googling methinks but please – check the reputation of sites visited, (Yes I know I am wasting my time.)

    Re:

    not the time for pointing at the other guy.

    Methinks it’s always time to point the finger when there’s a better than even chance that social pressure (including public ridicule) will get an improved outcome.

  14. corvusboreus

    Matters Not,
    Leaving aside vaccinations…

    ‘Atmospheric particulate enrichment’ has been seriously advanced as a potential geo-engineering ‘solution’ to both global warming and declining rainfall, since concentrations of dense particulates can both block direct solar rays (‘global dimming’) and provide condensation adhesion points to facilitate ‘cloud seeding’.
    Obviously, both ideas are fraught with inherent hazards (eg clouds seeded with sulphates tend to rain acid), and I tend to view such ‘solutions’ as being somewhat akin to the idea of avoiding hangovers by staying drunk, but such ‘solutions’ are, at the very least, being toyed with by tech-engineering boffin (along with the idea of seeding the oceans with iron oxides to ‘enhance’ phytoplankton photosynthesis).

    As for the idea that Wi-Fi irradiation may be causing cancers, I have heard doctors in interviews make unofficial anecdotal links between the recent prevalence of mobile phones and a notable concurrent spike in cases of carcinomas and tumours (particularly in the young) forming in both the right inner ear and brain lobe, as well as a slightly less notable increase in cancers on the lower right hip (pocket region)
    Since higher level exposure to electro-magnetic radiation (eg proximity to high voltage power lines) has been statistically shown as being linked to increased incidence of cancers, the exposure to concentrated irradiation from compact devices should not be summarily dismissed.
    I might reiterate that this information was purely anecdotal and dates back several years ago, and that comms technology has since rapidly evolved, which may have included better protective screening from any potential irradiation.

    All this is not to say that we should run blindly with crazy, just that we should sometimes consider the potential validities contained within superficial absurdities.

  15. Geoff Andrews

    wam,
    Yeah, I mulled over that one, Archie but I thought “No, if wam can get away with lower case ….”
    But I concede the (well argued) point that even though “aborigines” is a common noun referring to the original inhabitants of any country, convention and pedants now require capitalization.
    Either that or my Ancestors WERE, as I feared, evil to the local inhabitants; their genes reaching out over 150 years, manifesting in me the desire to write “aborigines” with an appropriate sneer.
    Aborigines, Aborigines, Aborigines. Wow, I think I’m cured!
    I think I’m now ready to go back to your 3.46pm contribution and wonder why you have no respect for Kaye.
    Damn it, I can’t find the smiley emoji.

  16. Matters Not

    corvusboreus – yes there are all the possibilities to which you refer. (Not probabilities – and I do understand that science isn’t ever about ‘truth’ in any epistemological sense.) That one particular person cites so many of the negative possibilities – beginning with so called ‘chemtrails’ (scientifically explained as harmless condensation trails, or contrails, formed when moist engine exhaust hits freezing temperatures at high altitudes) followed by another nonsense claim (some vaccinations are proven, most are not) I tend to lose patience particularly when this particular contributor cites no links to support any of the unproven claims made.

    To my aged mind, this contributor has no credibility. And, these days I have no patience, particularly with those who are too slothful to do any serious ‘homework’. Intellectual laziness writ large.

    Am also aware of the largely theoretical possibilities of what mighty be possible re addressing the worst effects of climate change. Until then …

  17. Alan Nosworthy

    Careful what you wish for,
    this mob would love to promote renewed burning of sulphur heavy lignite, brown coal as “Real Action” on climate change. Heroic actions worthy of taxpayers subsidy if not outright ownership of risk.
    This still remains a Government of no suprises, every bit as horrible as I feared.

  18. wam

    roswell. unlike us, geoff’s lack of respect could easily have been unintentional
    Although his making a joke is an indicative that it may have been more than careless?
    Your ‘I’ve seen worse’ puts the sword to my criticism and I will read your pieces more carefully for the big things.
    As an example of the need to be deliberate in avoiding unintended disrespect write:
    Has roswell or geoff aboriginal, indigenous or european ancestry?
    Is there any indication of proper nouns/adjectives??? My program shows 3 proper nouns/adjectives.

    ps that is the problem the poms couldn’t cope with the many languages so they just used a generic aboriginal inhabitants of terra nullius.
    If you think about it, how does that make sense? I try to justify my pedantic stance by using the aboriginal people who were in NZ before the pomms were the Maori(proper noun)
    Still the majority of australians are comfortable without a proper noun and this argument got me banished from roly sussex’s blog for calling some friend of his a racist So who cares, I am sure the Aborigines of australia are above it all and those that are racist don’t give a rat’s arse.

  19. johno

    The Sahara is massive, and I was just reading that around 8500 years ago the region was lush, humid, diverse vegetation with many lakes. Around that time humans began to move into the area with livestock and crops thus the gradual change to the present landscape.

    Growing agricultural addiction had a severe effect on the region’s ecology. As more vegetation was removed by the introduction of livestock, it increased the albedo (the amount of sunlight that reflects off the earth’s surface) of the land, which in turn influenced atmospheric conditions sufficiently to reduce monsoon rainfall. The weakening monsoons caused further desertification and vegetation loss, promoting a feedback loop which eventually spread over the entirety of the modern Sahara. Central to this cycle was the role that fire played in creating the new ecological circumstance. Although there is evidence for the presence of fires throughout all of human history, wild animals will not go onto a newly burned landscape because they would be easy targets for predators. However, pastoralists direct and protect their animals onto the newly regenerating landscape, altering the “ecology of fear.” This encourages scrub growth at the expense of grasses.
    Did Humans Create the Sahara Desert?

  20. Terence Mills

    Reading this it brought back the memory of Abbott coming to office and his pledge to repeal the school kids bonus, a scheme which allowed parents to be able to afford new school uniforms and include their kids in school outings and activities, introduced by the Gillard government.

    Abbott called it a ‘cash splash’ but I remember the look of pride on the face of a single mum of my acquaintance when her two kids scrubbed up in their first brand new uniforms rather than the tuck-shop seconds they had previously got by on. Nothing wrong with second hand uniforms but nice to see them have the choice.

    This cash splash also allowed a young girl to kit out and take part in an extracurricular cooking class which with the passage of a few years now sees her qualified as a sous chef.

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